Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities 2020-2021: Impacts, Findings, and Lessons Learned (2024)

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6 Conclusions: Reducing Compounding Disaster Risk by Addressing Vulnerabilities and Exposure and Building Adaptive Capacities Amid increased climate-related stress on people, communities, and the systems that support them, the risk of disasters and other major disruptive events continue to increase, along with the likelihood that more communities will experience the debilitating effects of compounding disasters. The physical, mental, and emotional effects of the overlapping response and recovery phases of sequential disasters compound and impose increased demands on organizations, agencies, and households. Consecutive and overlapping disruptive events, such as those experienced in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) region in 2020–2021, can stress households, community-based organizations (CBOs), and local authorities beyond their capabilities, which in some cases may not be sufficient to contend with a single shock. The insidious and complex effects of climate change require a new approach to understanding, planning for, and adapting to disaster risk across the systems that underpin the livability of all communities. The Fifth National Climate Assessment shows that current adaptation measures are insufficient to reduce climate-induced disaster risk, and that more efforts aimed at transforming systems are needed (USGCRP, 2023). Historically, disaster management in the United States has reacted to the occurrence of individual events. Disaster recovery processes and the funds they make available offer a potential opportunity to address vulnerabilities and reduce the impact of future disaster outcomes. However, the benefits of mobilized recovery funding rarely manifest among the vulnerable. Instead, current disaster recovery processes, too often, exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. These inequitable effects place additional burdens on communities that continually stress the capacity of their struggling support 204 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

systems. Moreover, the underlying physical and social vulnerabilities within communities continue to increase. These vulnerabilities increase the likelihood that minor disruptive events will become localized disasters. Unmitigated, compounding disasters threaten to destabilize communities throughout the GOM region. The Committee on Compounding Disasters in Gulf Coast Communities, 2020–2021 recognizes that transdisciplinary research and applied science in disaster resilience continues to advance rapidly in the wake of recent major events in the United States and around the world. This report is intended not only to contribute to the evidence base being generated by these efforts but also to support calls for community-guided action aimed at reducing systemic vulnerabilities, mitigating risk, and increasing adaptive capacities that enable communities to handle the complex challenges that confront them today and those likely to arise in a more climate-uncertain tomorrow. As introduced in Chapter 1 and discussed throughout this report, the reduction of compounding risk requires increased understanding of complex interactions of “meshed” exposure and vulnerability variables that determine a community’s sensitivity to experience disaster and intentional action to improve baseline conditions. The ability to make these improvements is predicated on increasing adaptive capacity, which is in turn dependent on the ability of institutions, organizations, governments, and the communities they serve to access and effectively mobilize social, scientific, technical, administrative, and financial resources across systems and functions that underpin communities. The committee’s research, analysis, and deliberations yielded a number of conclusions regarding the disruptive events that occurred in the GOM region in the 2020–2021 time frame. Grounded in the evidence base and illuminated by the profound experiences relayed to the committee by the affected communities during the course of this study, the conclusions presented here underscore the need to reimagine efforts that support disaster preparedness, mitigation, and recovery in an era of intensifying weather-climate hazards and increased risk of compounding disasters. In this era of compounding disasters, all entities in the disaster management enterprise need to redouble efforts to support communities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from each disruptive event that ensures equity, fairness, and justice. Conclusions 1–3 address the expanding realities of compounding hazard risk; conclusions 4–6 identify the need for improving and expanding our understanding of the new scale and temporal scope of compounding disasters; 205 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

conclusions 7–9 refer to the need to bolster public health, mental health, and community-based organizations and their adaptive capacity; and conclusions 10–14 identify new approaches to contending with compounding disasters. The Expanding Realities of Compounding Disaster Risk Conclusion 1: Compounding disasters introduce new, interconnected, and complex risk scenarios due to the increased potential of multiple hazards overlapping in time and space. As established in Chapter 2, recent studies in attribution science show that climate change is causing an increase in the frequency and/or severity of tropical storms, heavy rainfall, and extreme temperatures. The intensification of these and other more extreme weather- climate events are intersecting with areas experiencing high levels of health disparities, social vulnerabilities, and increased exposure due to population growth in hazard-prone areas. This convergence is resulting in prolonged and overlapping periods of disaster recovery. While hazards may be unalterable, their impact can be reduced by collectively building adaptive capacity—whether preemptive, in real time, or through the recovery process—within vulnerable and exposed systems, institutions, and people. Conclusion 2: Increased compounding disaster risk requires communities to plan and prepare for the co-occurrence of multiple and varied disruptive events that interact with societal exposure and vulnerabilities to amplify overall disaster impact. Two phenomena of global scope and scale—the sudden emergence and ongoing evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change—fundamentally influenced concurrent disaster events more circumscribed in time and place. The evidence presented in Chapter 3 made clear that while GOM communities have plans in place for addressing more common climate hazards (i.e., hurricanes), the same level of planning did not exist for less common events (i.e., Winter Storm Uri, the COVID-19 pandemic), let alone the co-occurrence of multiple events. Advancing adaptive capacity involves understanding how disaster events impact specific localities and funding locally led, long-term planning 206 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

for risk reduction and climate adaptation programs. Such programs must advance with built-in flexibility to respond to evolving priorities. Conclusion 3: When a community increases its capacity to absorb the effects of hazards and minimizes its recovery needs, disaster effects are less likely to compound. Targeted, community-guided investments to increase the resilience of essential services and infrastructure are important to achieve this objective. While it is preferable to invest before a disaster occurs, for those communities able to access such investments, the influx of recovery funding after a disaster can provide an opportunity to mitigate future losses and the potential for compounding disasters. As discussed in Chapter 5, many information-gathering session panelists highlighted the importance of flexible pandemic relief funds as an invaluable asset to help their communities recover. The literature on social capital discussed in Chapter 2 and the comments made by information-gathering session panelists both emphasize the critical role of social capital and cohesion in building resilience and catalyzing recovery from disaster events. Investments into building physical capacity to withstand hazards are essential, but the strengthening of adaptive capacity, including formal and informal relationships among community stakeholders is equally foundational to disaster resilience. The New Scale and Temporal Scope of Compounding Disasters Conclusion 4: Perception and understanding of risk are commonly grounded in past experience, leading to complacency in preparation and mitigation. As discussed in Chapter 3, cognitive biases such as recency bias and normalcy bias can lead to inaccurate conceptualizations of past events and can hamper risk communication, mitigation, and planning for future events that extend beyond what has been experienced or is perceived to be the benchmark extreme. These biases are similarly reflected in emergency management protocols, land-use planning and plans, zoning regulations, public utility design, and building codes, which are often grounded in historical precedent or probabilistic hazard descriptions derived from historical data. Given a changing 207 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

climate, this hindcasted vantage is unlikely to be representative of future hazard risks. Overcoming these biases requires new strategies. Conclusion 5: Effective disaster recovery requires an “epoch” rather than “event” view that more fully captures the prolonged effects of compounding disasters and reflects the experienced reality of the community. In the information-gathering sessions summarized in Chapter 3, panelists continually reported that the damage from and ramifications of discrete disaster events were impossible to disentangle when the disasters occurred in such rapid succession and their recovery time lines overlapped. This was particularly true in socially vulnerable communities that were inadequately resourced before the events occurred. An event- based perspective on disaster management is inherently narrow, reactive, and artificially time constrained. The event-driven view focuses on the symptoms rather than the root causes of disaster losses. Shifting to an epoch view better frames the breadth of lived experiences with disasters and accounts for the potential for compounding losses, driving the broad disaster response and recovery enterprise to more comprehensive and effective pathways forward. Conclusion 6: Risk assessment and communication for extreme weather-climate and multiple/sequential events is inadequate for both current and future conditions. The severity of many of the disaster impacts in 2020–2021 exceeded expectations. With a changing climate, the potential for complex events only increases. As described in Chapter 3, many information-gathering session panelists brought to light a variety of disaster communication challenges that were exacerbated by the compounded nature of events, including inconsistent technology and broadband access, accommodating non- English-literate populations, lack of public trust in government, and the spread of misinformation. Better preparation for future compounding events requires incorporation of compound event risk assessments, multisector collaboration, and improved risk communication. The multiple levels of a participatory information-sharing approach will increase understanding of the unique needs of socially vulnerable groups, enhance transparency, and reduce the potential for misinformation. 208 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

Bolstering Adaptive Capacity Conclusion 7: Health care and public health systems will require increased adaptive capacity and staffing to respond to diverse challenges posed by compounding disasters. Compounding disasters notwithstanding, health systems in the GOM region are already vulnerable and struggle to meet the needs of GOM populations, as discussed in Chapter 2. Recent literature and information-gathering session panelists made clear the increased strain on health systems caused by the co-occurrence of natural hazards and the COVID- 19 pandemic. The nature of the hazards encountered influences the effects on population health, health systems, and public health services. Even as extreme weather-climate events damage facilities and disrupt access to health care, emerging disease outbreaks require physically intact facilities and enough frontline professionals staffing them so that services can be rapidly shifted to communicable disease care, and local public health capacity can be maintained. Conclusion 8: Pervasive mental health issues from compounding disasters undermine the adaptive capacity of communities to withstand and effectively recover from disruptive events. Information-gathering session panelists spoke extensively about the negative mental health effects of compounding disasters on survivors, especially for specific subpopulations like first responders and volunteers. The impacts of disasters on behavioral health are pervasive, extend across a spectrum of severity, and may continue for a prolonged time. Chapter 2 details some of these specific impacts and explores the links between disaster exposure and adverse psychological and behavioral health outcomes. Mental health needs are magnified for those who experience more intense exposure and vulnerability to hazards. Particular attention is necessary to the mental health needs of those who are disproportionately affected psychologically, including children; the elderly; medically high-risk patients, including those with severe mental illness; and the frontline professionals including first responders, public health professionals, and volunteers tasked with disaster response and recovery responsibilities. 209 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

Conclusion 9: The heavy dependence on community-based organizations can strain these individuals and groups beyond the point of effectiveness in the face of compounding disasters. In the aftermath of a disaster, many immediate needs are met by neighbors helping neighbors and community-based organizations. As discussed in Chapter 4, information- gathering session panelists, particularly those representing CBOs, consistently reported feeling burned-out and overwhelmed from spending long hours providing physically and/or emotionally taxing labor for little compensation. While these volunteers and organizations are essential to disaster response and recovery, they may suffer from the compounded disaster impacts themselves and be unable to assist when needed most. Overreliance on this often uncompensated or underpaid workforce risks the depletion of critical human resource capacity for effective long-term recovery from successive disasters. New Approaches to Contending with Compounding Disasters Conclusion 10: While a powerful tool for delivering services in times of crisis, technology is not a universal substitute for interpersonal communication and in-person disaster recovery assistance. COVID-19 restrictions forced rapid innovations, creating more efficient ways to share critical data digitally and greater agility in delivering services virtually—adaptive shifts that were invaluable to service continuity when storms disrupted physical operations. However, as discussed in Chapter 4, processing federal disaster recovery assistance requests and insurance claims virtually caused errors and inefficiencies for survivors. Vulnerable populations, notably the elderly and low socioeconomic status individuals, are often least equipped to navigate complex and continually evolving online systems. For these populations, the reduction or elimination of in-person assistance prolonged disaster recovery efforts and increased risk for future disruptive events. 210 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

Conclusion 11: Safe, sanitary, and secure housing is a fundamental determinant of disaster resilience and recovery. and can thus be viewed as core community infrastructure. As established in Chapter 2, access to stable, long-term housing is critical for individual and collective well-being, and displacement from secure housing has deleterious effects on security, mental health, social connectedness, and well-being broadly. Since the most vulnerable housing (older/deferred-maintenance properties) is often occupied by the most vulnerable households, this segment of the inventory is especially susceptible to compounding disasters, even as the result of lower-intensity weather-climate events. Areas experiencing economic downturns or with aging housing inventories require particular attention to housing quality as part of ongoing efforts to address the broader affordable housing crisis that existed well before 2020. Conclusion 12: Effective community-guided risk reduction for compounding disasters requires greater understanding of and planning for the full range of potential disruptive events, along with their cumulative effects. Chapter 2 outlines the wide range of both hazards to which GOM populations are exposed and the consequences that these hazards can have on human health and well- being. These can be low- or high-probability events, and can span climatic (e.g., rapidly intensifying storms, slow-moving and stalling storms dropping significant rainfall, temperature extremes) and non-climatic (e.g., pandemic, technological) scenarios, including worst-case extremes. Local-level participatory planning processes that routinely engage and collaborate with socially vulnerable communities marginalized by income; education; age; ethnicity/race; representation in policy, governance, and recovery planning; gender; sexual identity; and/or medical risk and who are disproportionately affected by compounding disasters will more effectively guide and prioritize efforts to reduce potential impacts and concurrently build adaptive capacity. Conclusion 13: Stronger mechanisms are essential to translate lessons recognized from prior experience into lessons learned and implemented. 211 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS 

As discussed in Chapter 5, lessons are often identified after disasters, but they are rarely codified into formal policies and procedures before the next disaster strikes. Interaction between professionals and community members can relay local disaster memories to agency personnel. Ongoing and inclusive education, training, drills, and scenario-based exercises can perpetuate and reinforce lessons learned among all affected communities and decision-makers. Collaborative input of lessons learned into after-action reports can increase knowledge base, participation, and potential for implementation. Efforts at all levels of government to dissolve institutional silos and reinforce improved practices can also sustain lessons learned between disasters. Conclusion 14: Revisions to disaster planning, response, and recovery policies and procedures need to directly address and eliminate the uneven access to resources that can exacerbate social and economic inequities in the wake of disasters. Residents in affected areas with the most financial means, social capital, and technological skills are able to more effectively access recovery resources; compounding disasters can leave those without such critical capabilities in a more distressed condition and even minor disruptive events can become disasters. As discussed in Chapter 2, a large portion of GOM residents are in some capacity marginalized, and the current disaster recovery process often exacerbates vulnerabilities rather than addressing these vulnerabilities at their root. Information-gathering session panelists highlighted the need to incorporate equity into the disaster recovery process to better assist marginalized, socially vulnerable community members. 212 PREPUBLICATION | UNCORRECTED PROOFS